Scaling textile recycling: bridging the gap to reality
Making circularity work at scale
Scaling textile recycling takes more than innovation. Robust engineering and strong value-chain collaboration are needed to make circularity work.
The challenge: Converting promising innovation into scalable systems
The textile recycling landscape is rapidly developing. New technologies, in particular chemical routes, are emerging all over the world due to urgent circular solution needs. Many of them perform well at a laboratory or pilot scale by offering pathways for fiber recovery, polymer regeneration, or dissolution of cellulose. However, public studies show wide variance in the maturity of recycling technologies by material. Several European assessments, including work from the Joint Research Centre and independent institutes, place recycling pathways for pure cotton or other cellulose-based textiles as some of the most developed.1 Many chemical routes for cellulose, including producing dissolving pulp for man-made cellulosic fibres, are already at TRL 7–9, with a number of these already approaching full commercial scale. Mechanical recycling for cellulosic textiles is already at TRL 9, though limited both by fibre quality and feedstock purity.
By contrast, polyester/cotton blend technologies remain far more challenging. European technology roadmaps report that various blend-separation methods are still at a low TRL 1–3, particularly new chemical separation concepts (e.g. deep eutectic solvents and enzymatic separations). On the other hand, specific chemical recycling pathways for polyester in polycotton blends, such as alkaline depolymerization of polyester, have shown quite promising results at TRL 4–7. These routes are evolving but need additional engineering, impurity management, and feedstock conditioning before deployment on a large scale.
What these ranges of TRLs show is that there is no single solution to solve the textile waste problem today: pure cotton or polyester has high readiness, blends are under development but still need further improvement, while mechanical recycling, though mature, is limited. Besides, moving to industrial-scale operation introduces complexities that go well beyond any pilot trials: mixed feedstock composition, impurity levels fluctuating, continuous operations, stable product quality and stringent requirements for energy and cost efficiency.
To scale successfully, recycling technologies must perform reliably under real operating conditions. Managing feedstock variability through robust plant design is essential for achieving stable and flexible operation, an area where engineering is critical.
Our offering
Why scaling textile recycling is urgent
The need to scale textile recycling has never been more urgent. The European Union is reforming the regulatory landscape through the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles, along with new Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes to be fully operational by 2028.2 While the EU mandatory separation collection is active and being establishing from 2025 onwards, the arrival of the EPR will provide the necessary funds for infrastructure required. With the dual regulations, the volume of material entering the recycling streams will raise and incentivize the research and engineering to create feedstocks that are easier to sort and technologies that can effectively convert them into value-added products.
Yet the current situation illustrates the scale of the gap the industry needs to close. Europe generates an estimated 15.2 million tonnes of textile waste, from which only about 20% is currently separately collected for reuse or recycling. The remaining still goes into mixed municipal waste, rendering it unfit for high-value recycling. This gap has become a challenge and a commercial opportunity that the industry is addressing. To date, some brands have already set ambitious circularity commitments. Investors are entering the sector with high expectations, while developers of technologies are preparing for scale-up.
The market momentum is positive; however, expectations will only be met if the technologies of recycling transition successfully from pilot facilities to robust industrial systems. This shift requires more than just technical upscaling; the entire value chain must be industrialized to move from demo scale to commercial reality. For this to succeed, players must deeply understand the value chain and their specific role within it, as technical success alone cannot bridge the gap to a functional market.
Furthermore, product quality must remain consistent between the pilot/demo phase and full-scale production. If a market is built on the promise of pilot/demo samples, the industrial production must deliver that same quality. The next few years will be crucial in determining which innovations become commercially viable-and which may remain stuck at intermediate TRLs.
That brings up a crucial question for the whole value chain: How do we convert promising ideas into reliable, scalable recycling systems?
Solutions and opportunities to build the foundation for circularity
- 1. Advanced sorting to stabilize feedstock quality
- 2. Engineering the transition from pilot to industrial scale
- 3. Designing textiles with circularity in mind
- 4. Enhancing collection and supply chains
- 5. Creating realistic pathways to scaling
Only high-quality feedstock can ensure successful scaling. The utilization of technologies such as NIR spectroscopy, hyperspectral imaging, AI-aided classification, and digital product passports offers very substantial gains in sorting accuracy. To achieve this, these sorting technologies must also scale in parallel to serve large scale output. As these automated systems move toward TRL 8–9, they are designed to reducing manual sorting—providing the industrial throughput that human labor cannot achieve.
These tools help stabilize feedstock composition and enable the recycling technologies-particularly those currently at TRL 4-7-to operate closer to their design performance. It also improves consistency, reduces contamination, and operational risk, simply by reducing manual sorting.
Many of the chemical recycling routes for cellulose and polyester currently are moving from pilot to demonstration phases. However, scaling requires much more than proving a chemical reaction: it requires robust process design; stable heat and mass flow profiles; impurity tolerance; continuous operation strategies; and realistic energy integration.
In fact, these are not barriers but rather natural steps in developing any technology for TRL 8–9. Careful design and optimization can allow many promising pathways to become reliable industrial systems.
Circularity starts with design. To enable and support the development of chemical recycling companies, changes must be implemented further upstream in the value chain. Simplification of fibre mixtures, reduction of the complexity in finishing chemicals, and embedding of clear material information via digital product passports will make the textiles more easily identifiable, sortable, and recyclable.
These design choices support chemical recycling technology developers through the reduction of impurity loads and by allowing more predictable recycling processes.
A recycling plant, including both sorting and recycling facilities, is only as stable as the feedstock it gets. Today, only about 5 kg of textiles per person is separately collected for reuse or recycling in Europe, far below what is needed for large-scale recycling.
EPR schemes will play a key role in increasing the quality and quantity of collection, thereby providing recyclers with more consistent streams. This, in turn, enables the entire value chain to start operating more effectively, helped by better consumer awareness and more widespread access to collection points.
Innovation is not everything. Feasibility analyses, scale-up assessments, energy and mass balance modeling, and scenario evaluations that reflect real industrial conditions are very welcome and needed for technology developers. This view allows the teams to foresee potential problems, adapt processes, minimize risks and train for stable continuous operation.
Clear, realistic planning allows for better investment decisions and strengthens the long-term viability of emerging technologies.
Why AFRY?
AFRY acts as a bridge between innovative ideas and industrial reality. We do not provide recycling technologies but support clients in understanding how their ideas may develop into safe, efficient, and commercially viable operations across various TRL stages. AFRY works across numerous process-intensive industries, including chemicals, biorefining, and pulp and paper industry, and brings broad experience that helps identify opportunities and bottlenecks early. Our work spans:
- Technology Assessment
- Pre-feasibility and feasibility studies
- Multidisciplinary Engineering
- Project Deliveries including EPCM
- Health, Safety & Environment advisory
- Digitalization
- Advisory Services
We help clients turn ideas into actionable, technically robust, and sustainable development plans. We participate actively in textile recycling initiatives and cross-value-chain collaborations to support the client with transition from ideas to implementation and ensure technologies advance from early development toward reliable commercial operations.
Realizing circular textiles at scale means more than new ideas; it requires rigorous engineering and shared commitment across the value chain.
Technology Specialist, Chemicals
Co-author
Jonas Kihlman
Head of Development area New Technologies & Start-up Companies
Footnotes
- 1. Techno-scientific assessment of the management options for used and waste textiles in the European Union (JRC, 2023). ReHubs Initiative & STEP2030 Manifesto (2023/2024)Chemical Recycling of Textiles Synthesis (Refashion, 2024)
a↩ - 2. https://expra.eu/2025/12/20/eu-publishes-revised-waste-framework-directive-mandatory-textile-epr-and-food-waste-targets-enter-into-force/#:~:text=The%20amended%20Waste%20Framework%20Directive,reduction%20across%20the%20European%20Union.https://www.reconomy.com/2026/03/03/textile-epr-europe-2028/ a↩
